Improvement of the fishery knowledge of striped red mullet of the Bay of Biscay

Striped red mullet (Mullus surmuletus) belongs to the species for which individualization of stocks is advanced by ICES in western Europe for areas including the Bay of Biscay and the areas bordering the Iberian peninsula. Since 2012, ICES has provided recommendations with regards to this stock. These recommendations are given for two years and are based on an approach adopted by ICES in 2012 in the case of insufficient data for an analytical evaluation (Data Limited Stocks, DLS). For 2013 and 2014, ICES advice consisted in a 20% reduction in catches (average of the last 3 years:- 2009-2011) as a precautionary measure. Since that, no new advice has been formulated, the advice remains the same. Considering the impacts of such measurements on the French fishing fleet, improvement of the data available for stocks in the DLS category is therefore a priority. The project ROMELIGO aims to change this situation by contributing to the improvement of the knowledge on three stocks (striped red mullet, whiting and pollack) on the basis of the available data (declaring landing data or sampling data for French fishermen, data from scientific campaigns, etc.) or data to be collected (biological parameters). The first phase of the project analyzes the catches and the activity of the French professional fishery with regards to the species (composition and evolution of catches, seasonality, spatial distribution, gear used and discards). This WD provides the results of this phase regarding striped red mullet with as a preamble a bibliographic review on the biology of the species